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Kellenberger: Ole Miss is an NCAA Tournament team now

Coming off a 22-win season and a trip to the third round of the NIT, Ole Miss coach Andy Kennedy has added a top-20 recruiting class and an impact grad transfer in Memphis' Markel Crawford. With most of his top players returning, expectations are high for the Rebels going into next season.

They add into a roster that returns guards Deandre Burnett and Terence Davis, who combined for 31.4 points per game last season, and four other guys who played at least 20 minutes a night for a 22-win team that won a couple of NIT games.

That’ll work.

On paper it’s not the most talented team of the Kennedy era — for my money that’s still the 2012-13 roster, which had Murphy Holloway, Reggie Buckner, Marshall Henderson and Jarvis Summers all on it and won an SEC Tournament — but it’s close. It’s certainly better than what Kennedy has been working with the last couple of seasons.

Which has always been the thing with Ole Miss basketball under Kennedy. For whatever reason — the Tad Pad, deep ties of most in-state prospects to Mississippi State, relative scarcity of top prospects in Mississippi anyways — Kennedy has always been the coach in the Southeastern Conference doing the most with the least. The international pipeline thing didn’t really work out outside of Sebastian Saiz, and a steady stream of grad transfers has helped fill in the gaps, but it’s hard to build a program that way.

But one recruiting class into The Pavilion, Ole Miss has the No. 16 recruiting class in the country according to 247Sports, which includes Shuler, Pickett, Stevens and three-star guard Parker Stewart. That’s doing work.

And it combines with a roster that has a lot of different pieces, and will allow everyone to fill a role they’re capable of without being overextended.

That’s probably what happened to Burnett at times last season, but he’s better when you can handle his streakiness and take the good (he gets to the foul line more than anyone, and makes 88.1 percent of his shots from there) with the bad (seven games in single digits) because there are other guys there to score.

Crawford is a little bit the same way, according to one Memphis basketball observer. He’s not a No. 1 scoring option and he may have worn down at the end of a Tiger season in which Tubby Smith asked him to be that a lot. But as a secondary option he’s legit, especially because he’s not reliant on jump shots and probably at his best slashing to the rim and finishing there.

You also have Davis, for my money the highest-upside player on the roster who flourished as a sophomore, and Cullen Neal, a 40-percent shooter that slides into a complementary role. And Breein Tyree, who had some real moments as a freshman point guard, and Shuler, who Kentucky coach John Calipari raved about in January.

That’s a lot of guards, but you can play three of them at a time with some combination of Pickett, Stevens, seniors Marcanvis Hymon and Justas Furmanavicius, and 7-foot Drake transfer Dominik Olejniczak (who program insiders have consistently praised based on his play in practice).

The Kennedy era has always been a little weird. There’s a sizeable segment of the Ole Miss fanbase that just never warmed to him, that through 11 years, nine 20-win seasons and a couple of NCAA Tournaments have always believed there’s a better option out there. There’s just a big of group that will hammer home Ole Miss’ weak basketball history and cling on to good but not great accomplishments (20-win seasons that ended in NITs, for instance) as proof Kennedy is great. The truth is probably somewhere closer to the middle, but neither side is changing its mind anytime soon.

When faced with that sort of situation all you can really do is continue to make NCAA Tournaments and try to make a run in one of them, and decide your own future that way. With the team Kennedy and his staff have put together for next season, that’s going to be the expectation.

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-Caption: KENNEDY. OCTOBER 11, 2005.University of Cincinnati's head basketball coach Andy Kennedy poses for a photograph in the FifthThird Arena on the main Campus Tuesday October 11, 2005. Kennedy will officially start the 2005-2006 season, his first as head coach, with his team this Friday. The Enquirer/Gary Landers Gary Landers, Copyright 2005 The Clarion Ledger;Other

Mississippi head coach Andy Kennedy talks with media on the court during practice the day before the second round of the 2013 NCAA tournament at the Sprint Center. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports, USA TODAY Sports

Mississippi Rebels head coach Andy Kennedy talks to players in a timeout in the second half of the game against the Wisconsin Badgers during the second round of the 2013 NCAA tournament at the Sprint Center. Mississippi won 57-46. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports, USA TODAY Sports

Mississippi head coach Andy Kennedy, second from right, directs his team in the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against Middle Tennessee Saturday, Dec. 9, 2017, in Murfreesboro, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) AP